Travel: Have You Slept in a Wigwam Lately?

Antique cars increase the charm and trees reinforce the point at the Wigwam Motel in Holbrook, Arizona.

At first glance, driving in after a scenic tour through Arizona’s Painted Desert on a late summer afternoon, the Wigwam Motel in Holbrook doesn’t look like much, just a forlorn collection of stucco-coated dunce caps on an asphalt lot by an aged strip of Route 66 in a forgotten settlement amid the vast 27,000 square miles of the Navajo Nation reservation. Wedged between the old Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railroad tracks and the Mother Road, the wigwams are folk-art vestiges of another America, with fading but still pleasing red zigzag striping, steel branch tips suggestive of real teepee poles, and tiny round metal light fixtures at the very top, like the star on a Christmas tree. The little lights can’t compete with the orange-and-cherry sunsets and starry nights of this part of the world, but as the sun goes down, they do add to the allure of spending a night at the Wigwam Motel.

Holbrook, Arizona, once an important freight and Route 66 stop, fell by the wayside, like so many towns, with the construction of Interstate 40, which smothered Route 66 from Oklahoma westward. After the local portion of the interstate was completed, in 1978, drivers generally avoided the old cornball tourist traps, Indian villages, trading posts, carny-style attractions, and small towns promising homemade pies and frybread. Holbrook is today a lonesome, quiet cowboy town that wears economic hard times like a failed musician passing the hat. It has good mineral shops, with high-quality petrified wood from the nearby Petrified Forest, an early national park that’s been pillaged and scavenged by travelers for over a century. But going to Holbrook just for “the wood,” as locals call the variegated pieces of ancient timber, is an inconvenience; you can get the wood just about anywhere off the interstate. The sunburnt proprietor of a derelict Holbrook flea market told me, “Nobody comes here no more. Even the folks who used to come here to shop from the rez, they just stay up on the rez. They ain’t nothin’ to buy down here.”

But the people still come to Holbrook for the wigwams.

Like other motor courts of the day, the Wigwam Motel is arranged in a U so its rooms are easily accessed and easily exited. A sturdy sign over the centrally placed office asks, “Have you slept in a wigwam lately?”—an innocent query that has enticed families to pull over since 1950. Parked at each wigwam is a classic American car, and everything about the place, from the freight trains passing by behind the back line of teepees, under small sheep clouds marching overhead in pastel blue skies, to the romance of Route 66 itself, is a winking reminder of the glory years of road travel. Of a time when tourists heading west were treated to—or assaulted by, depending on who you ask—endless offerings of tacky Western Americana, splashy billboards enticing tourists to Come and See an Indian Village! Kachinas! Baby Buffalo! And while the wigwams by their very cheap-imitation existence scream political incorrectness and remind one of the long and disheartening history of exploitation of Indians, they also instantly seduce and beckon, innocent of all charges, promising only a trip back into a past that today seems reassuringly simpler, even if it wasn’t.

It certainly was a time when there was individuality in our national hospitality industry, a far cry from the modern sprawltown express inns that erase the character of whatever locale they occupy. The Wigwam Motel of Holbrook was always meant to look unlike anything else on the road, for it had to compete with its neighbors: the incomparable Grand Canyon, the banded magic cliffs of the Painted Desert, the spoils of the Petrified Forest, as well as the siren calls of Las Vegas and Los Angeles and hundreds of other attractions and enterprises in between. The Wigwam Motel is now one of only three surviving in the country, down from a heyday of six during the postwar period. It is that place where elusive ”fond memories” were made, where you’d want to return time and again (but wouldn’t, to your regret), that unforgettable-looking American oddity you wish you’d stopped at, back on that road trip with the kids in 1962, but never did.

John Lewis, the current owner and the son of Chester Lewis, who built the place, holds court after 4 p.m. in the motel’s office lobby, a cool and airy space with spinning postcard racks and collections of T-shirts and souvenirs and local artifacts like a necklace made from human teeth. Amid petrified wood stumps long settled on the old carpet, he patiently answered questions and treated me to some local history as well as a tour of his museum gallery in a back room. He spoke of a long-ago time when the area was still studded with forests of felled petrified wood and there was such an abundance that some of the “wood” was crushed and transported by train for use in the construction of New York roads. As he handed me a room key, he informed me that the long-term fate of the wigwams is uncertain but assured me that the place does a bustling business and things are just fine “for now.” He cheerfully urged me take note of his recent renovations.

The rooms under the stucco dunce caps have been pleasantly and comfortably refurbished, but they retain sufficient original details so as not to break the retrospective charm. They are also surprisingly capacious, despite being cozy. My room offered two queen-size beds and plenty of extra room for luggage. There was a television, which was sort of too bad, but no phone. There is air conditioning, which soothes on triple-digit Arizona summer days. If you’re carrying too many extra pounds, forget about using the shower; the colorfully tiled compartment is original, and access into the stall is through a mere slit cut into the wall, made for the slender and shorter Americans of 1950. I passed a rather restless night, not the fault of the accommodation but because of the ritual of waiting out processions of passing freight trains rattling the motel, as they’ve done for decades. I didn’t mind a bit. To be in a wigwam, serenaded by trains, opening the door to a beautiful aqua blue 1959 Chevy Impala parked right outside and the haunted Route 66 just beyond, is to be given a license to step back to an earlier America. For that I’ll happily give up a little sleep.

Tips: The Wigwam Motel is at 811 West Hopi Drive—the old Route 66—in Holbrook, Arizona. The phone number is 928-524-3048. Holbrook is in eastern Arizona about halfway between Flagstaff and Gallup, New Mexico. Call to make your reservations after 4 p.m., Arizona time. While in Holbrook, dine at the affordable El Rancho, at 867 Navajo Boulevard. The service is friendly, families abound, as do Indians and cowboys, and it’s a rare home-cooking holdout in the age of the fast-food nation. On some nights El Rancho offers live music. And do stop at the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert; the loop drives in the twin parks don’t take long, and visiting around dusk will make for beautiful photographic opportunities. Please leave the wood where it lies.

—Jillian Sim lives and writes in the desert Southwest.